Knee Deep in the River
by robertskycard
Summary: As winter sets in, a crippled Ellie tries her best to find her friend, Elizabeth, who has been captured by an unsavory character, and Joel, whom she last saw fighting for his life. Amanda, wounded and desperate, is thrust into a world she has worked so hard to avoid. Four people. Four stories. One family.
1. Chapter 1: Return

Chapter 1: Return

(Late Summer, Pacific Northwest)

"Ah! Fuck!" Amanda hissed, wrapping her arm in gauze. The soldier's shots had been wild, but one managed to graze her forearm. She had only noticed it much later, being more preoccupied with finding Joel, Ellie, and the others. Especially Ellie. Amanda's shots had been low just before the soldier fired back, and she wasn't sure if she hit the soldier's legs or if she'd hit Ellie. Before she had time to figure it out, the soldier whirled on her and fired, making her dive for cover. Then, a runner had jumped her, almost biting her, and that was how she lost track of everyone else.

She had run for about twenty minutes until she realized she had no plan, no gear. Nothing but the clothes on her back, a replacement set in her backpack, a rifle with two bullets slung over her shoulder, a few tins of food that would last about a day, and a 9mm with about six rounds of ammo tucked into the waistband of her cargo pants. If she was going to take off into the wild, she would need a lot more than that. At the very least, she would need some more food and a compass.

She had returned to Jackson, following the acrid black smoke that was rising into the sky like a massive ebony pillar. When she finally got into town, she immediately registered the trademark clicking that always made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Close listening revealed that there were a number of sources from which the chilling sound came. Amanda had vaguely wondered where they had come from, but it didn't take much to figure out how an army of infected had descended on Jackson. The small fireworks Elizabeth had made brought at least a few dozen infected every day for three weeks straight, so of course a protracted gun battle with numerous explosions and an active tank would draw an even greater number. Amanda had seen it before. Coming back for supplies was a really risky move. But it was even riskier to tromp off into the woods without direction or supplies. She needed her compass, food, and ammo.

It had taken her some time, but she had found a compass. Not her compass, but a working compass was better than none. Unfortunately, her house, which contained her personal food stockpile, had been so overrun that even attempting to go inside would have been suicide. She did score a lucky break when a runner she strangled had gauze in its coat pocket. It was only then that she realized that she'd been shot. She had done a routine check for bites when she saw that her sleeve was soaked in her blood. She removed the jacket to find the wound. Once she figured out it was a bullet wound, she relaxed.

Now, she tied off the gauze and moved to put her jacket back on when she realized that the wet blood would both attract wild animals and chill her before it dried. She didn't want to fight a bear with hypothermia. Now, she also needed a new coat. Her bloody jacket would be better than the thin tank-top she had now, but it would be a while before it would be both safe and useful. Thankfully, the dead runner had been a woman around her height and weight, if a little skinny, and its dark canvas, flannel lined coat was relatively clean and dry. Amanda pulled the coat from the dead runner and put it on. It fit well. And it was even thicker than her old jacket, which was simple, thin polyester and cotton. This was a winter coat, not a windbreaker.

She zipped it up and picked up her rifle. She wanted to get her compass, but sentimental value would only get her killed. However, she reasoned that if she had two, one could get broken and she would have a spare to replace it. She sighed. She should have taken up her dad's offer to teach her how to read a star chart when she had the chance. Now, she had to get his compass. The only thing she had left of him.

She stalked her way through the alleys and back yards, the main street nothing but a minefield of shambling infected, the husks of cars, the burning corpse of the soldier's tank, and the bodies of friends and enemies alike. If she got out of Jackson alive, she would hunt down that soldier prick and make him pay for taking away the home she made for herself here. But first she had to find Ellie, Joel, and the others that mattered to her.

Her heart panged with guilt. She'd made a plan with Joel to draw the tank's fire away while others tried to get away after it fired on the church. She should have told him how she felt about him. She thought that, if things were like they had been before, she could stay with him. Help Ellie grow up. Her dad would have been so proud to see her settling down. But her dad was dead. Joel and Ellie were missing.

She was so lost in thought, she almost stepped into a trip wire attached to a can with a bunch of blades sticking out of it. She saw it just in time and froze, slowly drawing her foot back. She released the breath she didn't know she had been holding. She carefully stepped over the wire and was about to continue on when an idea popped into her head.

She knelt down by the can and gently removed the top. She reached in, found the wire, and disconnected it from the fuse. Now it was inert, but that didn't make her feel any safer.

Joel had taught everyone how to make this kind of IED, as Amanda liked to call it. Everyone else called it a nail bomb. Apparently, Joel had been taught how to make it by some crazy fucker out in the East Coast. The IEDs Amanda generally ran into were simply military explosives attached to fishing line or an old egg timer. If she were lucky, she would run across a good, old fashioned pipe bomb. However, this thing was something else entirely. Joel had taught everyone how easy it was to make one as well as what to look for in terms of materials. It was added to the list of things to look out for while out on scavenging runs. They found the materials everywhere, even in places previously thought picked clean.

However, that was months ago. Those areas were mostly picked clean now and Amanda could use all the help she could get. She stored the explosive in her pack before zipping it up slowly. She shook her pack lightly. Nothing. She breathed a sigh of relief. It was still dead. She put on her pack and continued her hunt for the compass.

She hadn't had time to get her personal items like the others. She had had to go to the doc first to treat her wounds, and then she spent the rest of the time helping construct defenses before taking her place in the rifle line. Her face still hurt where her cheek had been cut. Her missing finger nails still burned, the bandages colored deep red where the gauze touched the wounds. It hurt to move her fingers. But none of it was not as painful as what the soldier had said to her.

"You see this?" he had said, holding up the first nail in front of her face. She had refused to look. He'd grabbed her by the hair and forced her to look, "That used to be yours. Now it's mine. Easy as that. You want to know why? Because you put up a couple of watch towers and a sheet metal fence and call it 'safe.' That's not safe."

He pointed behind him into a thicket of trees, "One of my older guys told me that a buncha people went north when it all started, hoping the infected would all freeze to death when winter came. Then, they'd be 'safe'. Yeah, didn't work out so well for half of 'em. The ones who who froze to death or got eaten by cannibals, anyway. For the rest of 'em, they'd came into spring knowing that winter didn't do shit to combat infected and all their planning was for nothing.

"Then there's these survivalist types, these doomsday preppers. Boobytrap the help out of a street corner, a city block, or a whole fucking town, stake a claim, and pretty much shoot on sight. Killed a few of 'em on our way up here. You know what they had in common with those people who tried to freeze the infected?

"Both of 'em thought that if they did one thing or another, they'd make everything go back to normal," he held up the nail in her face again, "Let me ask you something. When you sneak up on some poor, unsuspecting prick, wrap your arm around his throat, and make him do the chicken, does that strike you as 'normal?' And the fact that you do that day in and day out, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that?"

"Fuck you, it's not normal! That's why we're-"

The back of his hand struck her face, sending her to the ground. Her cheek struck a rock and split the skin, warm blood running down her flesh. Rough hands hauled her back up to her knees.

"Bullshit it isn't normal. It's our fucking life now. If we don't learn how to fight, we die. You and your pals think that with a few 'scouting missions', some barbed wire, watch towers, and electricity, you can return things back to the way they were. That's the problem. They won't. Now now, not ever. Safety isn't real. It's an illusion. A fucking joke."

At first, she had been convinced that Jackson could beat him back, drive out his men and save the town. But, as she now stalked the alleys, hiding from the streets she used to walk down without so much as peeking over her shoulder, she realized that the soldier was right. If safety wasn't possible anymore, then she might as well take what little sentiment she had left.

Amanda broke out of her thoughts when she saw her target. She pressed her back against the fence of the house she had shared with Joel and Ellie. She peeked through the slats, hoping to see what was on the other side. She couldn't see much besides grass and dirt, but she didn't see movement. She crept to the gate and quietly opened it before sliding through. The empty back yard greeted her like an old friend.

She crept to the wall by the sliding glass back door and pressed her shoulder against the siding. She peered around the corner. She saw that the door had been boarded up and that the ground floor windows and doors had also received the same treatment. Maria had wanted it that way for all the houses lined up along the street leading to the church.

Thankfully, Amanda knew a way around. A second floor window had remained open, as the people who boarded the building up had used it to get out. The ladder they had used to climb down still lay in the back yard. She, slung her rifle over her shoulder, picked up the ladder, and leaned it against the wall, placing the top just underneath the open window. She climbed slowly, her fingers throbbing, her heart hammering. She could still hear the infected making noise on the street. She took her time, keeping her hand relaxed and her breathing steady. As long as she kept her cool, she would be fine.

As she stepped up on one of the rungs, it snapped with a screech of metal. Her foot gave way and she nearly fell, catching herself on the sides of the ladder. She heard the collective screech from around the house. The hair on the back of her neck prickled up and her heart beat faster, a chill running through it. Oh, shit. She resumed her climb in earnest, reaching the window frame just as a runner came scrambling over the fence. Oh shit oh shit oh shit! She pulled herself into the window as more runners scaled the fence, pausing just long enough to kick the ladder out and away from her before hauling herself inside. She hit the floor with a thud and got to her feet, reaching over and slamming the window shut. She heard thumping on the walls, the pounding of fists.

Amanda placed her hands on her knees, bent forward, and blew air out of her mouth, trying to calm herself. She may have just trapped herself in a house surrounded by infected with no way out but through them, but panicking about it would do nothing but amp her up even more. She needed to find her things and then make a plan to get out. With the way the house was boarded up, she had maybe an hour before they broke through. People got tired. The infected had almost endless reserves of energy.

She stood back up to get her bearings, mentally counting her breaths to keep calm. She realized where she was. Ellie's room. Ellie's beloved comics lay stacked in order beneath the nightstand. The nightstand's drawer had been left open. The bed had been made neatly in a military style Amanda was familiar with, remembering how her father always made the bed that way, and that she had picked up the habit herself. The nearby closet was empty, ancient coat hangers littering the floor. The drawers of the wardrobe had been pulled open and stripped bare, and the pictures on top of it had been placed face down, probably by Ellie.

Amanda recalled that she'd done the same thing in her bedroom before moving in with Joel. It was unsettling to try to sleep while the faces of the dead and gone see stared, immobile and immortal. Yet Amanda couldn't bring herself to get rid of them, either. Laughing newlyweds, parents with a smiling baby, a young girl with braces, and a family get-together. Amanda couldn't destroy this only glimpse into a past she could only guess at, a past much like hers, one that she could barely remember herself.

The infected pounded on the walls, a shriek from them breaking her train of thought and putting her focus back to the task at hand. She made for the door, taking one last look at the room. Her eyes fell on the comics below the nightstand.

_Ellie's gonna want those. _

_They won't be useful for more than kindling. _

_I have plenty of room in my backpack._

_Room for food, ammo, and supplies. _

Amanda stood in the doorway for a few moments.

"Fuck it," she muttered and she walked back over to the nightstand, unslinging her rifle and leaning it against the wall in order to take off her backpack. She knelt down, scooped up the comics, and tucked them into her backpack. Surprisingly, they took up even less room than she thought they would. She stood up, slung the pack and the rifle back over her shoulders, and left the room. A moment later, she stood at the door to Joel's room.

_I should have told him I loved him._

She swallowed hard as she pushed the door open slowly. She remembered the first time she ever came in here. It was a lovely, private memory. Afterward, she had brought some things over, but she wasn't sure what she brought. It felt like so long ago. Were things like they were before, she might have waited much longer, for just about everything that happened between them. But then, Joel might also still have his daughter, Sarah, a girl who would have been around Amanda's age by now, if a few years younger.

She examined the room, knowing it well. The wardrobe looked untouched since the outbreak, the framed photos upon it showing a smiling, happily married elderly couple. Joel's bed was made, though not as neatly as Ellie's. The closet door stood open. Like Ellie's room, his place looked ransacked. Amanda could clearly see the two of them, frantically throwing things they needed into their backpacks before rushing out the door.

Hopefully she could find what she was looking for in the remains. She picked through the room meticulously. Unlike Ellie, Joel was entirely practical, completely organized, and reserved. He didn't open up much. She could tell. She had noticed that almost all of his things were always packed and ready to go, his banged up backpack hanging on the wall hook by the front door. She always saw it every time she left to go on scavenging trips or watch duty. Even after he had finally made a home, he was ready to leave at a moment's notice.

_If that was true, what the hell did he ransack his room for?_

The thought clicked in her mind like a lightbulb in a lamp. She cyphered through the options. Clothing? No. She'd showed them the house their first day back. He had hung up some damp clothing in the closet, but when she came in later, the closet was empty, the clothes no doubt packed away in his deceptively cavernous backpack. Sarah's watch? No, he never took it off. It wasn't his things that he had been looking for. Did Ellie give him something? No, that would have also been in the backpack.

It had to be Amanda's compass. She had only realized she had left it in Joel's room the night before when she went out on patrol. She didn't usually take it with her on patrol, as she knew the area and she preferred for it to be safe at home. Now, she realized she had let herself become complacent, and was kicking herself for it. She'd been in a dozen other settlements that fell, and she had always been prepared for their eventual collapse. Why should Jackson be any different?

Maybe because she was one of the early birds, the settlement having been only few months old when she stumbled upon the gate, completely unaware that a few people had set up shop during the winter. As time went by, it started to feel actually safe, instead of a checkpoint between long stretches of living out in the wilderness. Even though she lived alone. The one thing the world had now that there were a lot less people in it was room to stretch your legs. Amanda was able to live alone in a two-story house like the one in which Joel and Ellie lived. Of course, if things were beginning to crowd up, she was always the first one to offer room, even sleeping on the floor when spacial needs required it. Nicer than sleeping on cold, damp mud every damn day.

The thought that she was returning to that life, possibly permanently, made her shiver. Every time she was forced to leave somewhere, she had a foreboding feeling that something would happen to her before she found the next one. She might get killed. She might get infected. She knew she was getting older at the age of thirty-seven, but she had about ten years to catch up to Joel's current age. She knew she was going to hit menopause anytime soon, and then the other signs of age would follow shortly after. As much as she dreaded those changes, she feared death much more.

Amanda shook her head. The compass wasn't here. Joel had to have it. Now that all her personal items were accounted for, it was time to formulate an escape. She stepped back out into the hallway, making her way to the bathroom, the dull thumping of infected fists outside having almost become white noise. That was dangerous. She needed to focus.

_Pop!_

Amanda ducked instinctively. That was a gunshot. A far away one, but still a gunshot. The infected outside screeched in uproar at the new sound.

_Pop! Pop! Pop! _

That was a burst, an automatic weapon. She was sure of it. It was closer. It came from the street side of the house. She made her way back into Joel's room and peeked through the old curtains. A pair of black army jeeps barreled down the street, rolling over the bodies that lay strewn about. A number of runners pursued the jeeps. It was obvious that these were the soldier's rearguard. She ducked back behind the wall, hoping that those in the vehicles wouldn't see her.

_Vrooooom!_

_Screeeeeeech!_

_Popopopopopopop!_

_Thunkthunkthunk!_

Bullets struck the side of the house as the infected around it screamed and charged at the noise. More gunfire, shrieks, clicking, then shouts. A scream of agony. She peeked out behind the curtain. The infected had swarmed the vehicles, and were pulling someone out through the window, tearing him apart with hands and teeth. She got a quick look at him. What wasn't stained with gushing blood was the dark blue and black of a military uniform and combat armor.

She didn't know whether to curse or cheer. If Amanda was going to slip away, now would be the time to do it. She rushed back to Ellie's room and yanked open the window before peeking out. She saw a pair of shoes disappear over the fence before the runner they belonged to charged toward the street. She surveyed the yard. It was clear. Unfortunately, there wasn't any way down from the window. Except to try to jump out.

There was a problem with that. Normally, she would have leapt immediately, as the yard was a flat landing area. All she would have to do was brace herself. But the ladder she'd kicked down lay just where it could cause trouble. If she landed on it, she'd either twist or break her ankle. If that happened, she'd most likely either suffer a quick, egregiously painful death at the hands of the infected or the soldier's men, or a long, slow, and painful death from infection and starvation. She could miss the ladder if she leapt out far enough, but that was a gamble. Maybe she could find another way out? She immediately shot down the idea. There was no time.

She climbed out of the window and held onto the frame with her hands, positioned like a swimmer at the edge of a pool, ready to push off. She counted to three. _You can do this, Amanda._

_One._

_Two._

_Three._

She let go and pushed off. She conserved her momentum by tucking into a ball when her feet hit the ground. She missed the ladder. She got to her feet and ran to the gate, wrenching it open and squeezing through. She sped through the alley and up to the sheet metal fence, prying one of the sheets back before sliding through the hole she made and running into the woods again.

As the gunshots, screams, and shrieks of infected slowly faded away into the distance, her full run slowed to a jog, a walk, and then she stopped, panting, breathless, sweat streaking down her brow as her chest heaved. She placed a palm against a tree and leaned forward, calming down slowly, getting her bearings. She adjusted her baseball cap and stood up.

"Alright. Now, where would I go if I were a teenager running low on supplies?" she muttered to herself as she pulled out the compass she had found. She waited patiently for the needle to swing north. She was pointed west.

"Okay, so Jackson's southeast of here, the dam's east of Jackson, south of Jackson is the national park, and north of Jackson is Ghost Town."

'Ghost Town' was a tiny town a few miles north of Jackson, named such because it had no appearance on any map the residents of Jackson had. Perhaps this was because the 'town' was little more than a gas station, a convenience store, a drug store, and a motel set for tourists of the nearby national park that used to be there. The only sign that once had the name on it had long since been destroyed by a fallen tree. Best anyone could tell, it started with a 'g' and ended in 'town'. Thus came about the name 'Ghost Town'. It was more of a joke than anything. But it was also a good landmark.

However, it wouldn't have been Amanda's first choice as a temporary hideout.

Ghost Town, Jackson, the dam, all were connected to the interstate highway. It was probably the most important landmark they had had. It was the place to meet in the event of a town evacuation, as it was elevated above the valley. The highway remained where many other mountain roads had eroded or fallen away. With Ghost Town simply too closed in by trees, the dam a prime target because of its noise, and the national park miles and miles of wild terrain, the highway, specifically exit 437, was the best meeting spot if Jackson fell.

But Ellie might not know that. Or she could have panicked. Hell, Amanda had been running southwest for twenty minutes before realizing she had to go back, and she'd had to flee towns like Jackson before. However, she knew that Ellie didn't know these woods like she did or have the experience to deal with being thrust suddenly into a survival situation. But Ellie was a fighter. She'd find a way.

During her thoughts, Amanda had looked down at the ground past her compass. It was stained with a bloody footprint. She looked around. Blood trailed from the southeast, and turned north just where Amanda stood. It seemed only the left foot was bloody. She knelt down to examine the track more closely. There was something odd about the track. It looked distorted, as if it were damaged by something. However, all the other tracks looked just like it. The shoe had been damaged, probably, and that caused the bleeding wound. The blood itself was only a few hours old, still a little sticky. There was a lot of it. Whoever owned this shoe was severely injured, probably a casualty of the battle at Jackson. She examined the tread more closely. It appeared to belong to a sneaker, the kind that a teenager would wear. Converse, or a knockoff. She had loved wearing those when she was a teenager.

_Oh fuck._

Amanda went pale.

_Oh, no. No, no, no._

It was Ellie's footprint.


	2. Chapter 2: Captured

**Hello everyone, and welcome to the sequel for _I'm Not Letting You Go_! I'm really happy for all the positive response the previous fic had and I'm really glad for the response of the first chapter of this one. I didn't have an author's note in the previous chapter because I wanted it to be a cold opening, but I'm really happy about the turnout! You guys are the bomb!**

**First off, I'm going to address the point of view. Unlike _I'm Not Letting You Go_, where the entire story was from Ellie's point of view and the story was told in sequence, I'm going to be switching back and forth between multiple characters. Not only that, some chapters will go back in time to tell the stories of Amanda and Elizabeth, neither of whom were fully fleshed out, but I will let you know immediately when a flashback chapter comes out.**

**Secondly, I'm going to address the title. It was inspired by the song _Bartholomew_ by The Silent Comedy. _Bartholomew_ deals with the struggle against the onslaught of the world, including one's own choices. Last time, the main theme was guilt, redemption, and forgiveness, but this time its more about struggling to survive, as well as the basic themes in _The Last of Us_. I wanted the title to convey the sense of the theme of this fic and I hope it comes across**.

**Thirdly, other than the summary, I shall not put warnings about the content of certain chapters. This is because I want things to come as a shock to people. I really wish to be considerate to everyone, but in novels, movies, and video games, the only warning you get is the rating on the package or the section you find in in the store. This means that my author's notes are going to be a bit more sporadic and there might only be a few.**

**Finally, I hope you enjoy this chapter and this fic.**

* * *

Chapter 2: Captured

(Late Summer, Pacific Northwest)

"Keep moving," Fredricks grumbled roughly. Elizabeth trudged forward, keeping her eyes locked onto the path ahead. Fredricks was a dark man, probably in his mid forties. Elizabeth, however, was still at the age where anyone with a wrinkle was 'old.' The 'old' man wore navy blue military fatigues, black combat armor and boots, held a shotgun in his hand, and had a revolver secured in a holster on his right thigh. Elizabeth didn't look nearly as prepared for battle compared to him, considering she wore only a grey hoodie, a black t-shirt underneath, dirty, rough skinny jeans, and old work boots. Even though she was much lighter in skin-tone than him, the two of them could have passed off as father and daughter.

Which was funny to her because she was currently plotting to kill him.

He was one of the soldier's men and had captured her when she had stumbled on Riley's grave sight in her haste to get away. How he had snuck up on her on an open hilltop, she didn't know. But what she did know was that he had basically all of her worldly possessions. The only thing she was allowed to carry was her backpack and the spare set of clothes inside. Her pistol, her lockpick set, her supplies, and the mementos of her father were all tucked away in little back corners on Fredricks' person.

Still, she considered herself lucky. When he'd captured her, he'd said he couldn't tie her up due to a 'lack of equipment' and that he'd keep her unharmed due to 'protocol'. He could have done any number of things to her if he wanted. But all he did was put her on a forced march north, occasionally nudging her with the barrel of his shotgun when she'd slow down or stop.

But he was also working with the soldier. Before she had fled, she had seen them mercilessly butcher her neighbors. Her friends. She saw Marcus cut down in a burst of machine gun fire. She saw one of them split her neighbor Ron's head with a machete. Another clubbed a fleeing woman and began to savagely strike her over and over until Elizabeth put a bullet through his throat.

_I hope Ellie made it._

That was perhaps the most painful part of the Jackson massacre. She didn't know who made it out. After all, the residents of Jackson gave as good as they got, even though the soldier had a tank and about a hundred fully armed and armored men. It looked like the fight might start turning in Jackson's favor after the tank exploded. Then, the infected showed and stole victory from both sides. That was the thing about them. No matter what happened, they would inevitably show up and kill whatever they could find. Ironically, the chaos of the infected making their appearance allowed Elizabeth to make her escape.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

She felt metal press against her back, a short, sharp shove. She stumbled forward, but caught herself and resumed walking.

"I'm walking," she grumbled.

"Not fast enough if we want to make the rendezvous point by nightfall," her captor growled.

"You afraid your soldier buddies are going to leave you behind?"

"If we don't get there by 0900 tomorrow morning, yes they will. If that happens, it won't end well for you."

She fought the urge to turn around and stop, "What do you mean by that?"

"I don't have the resources to support two people on a trek all the way back to Chicago with no working vehicles. I can't afford to leave you to your own devices either. So I'll have to...consolidate."

"Pretty way of saying you'll leave me for dead in a ditch," even though her tone was sarcastic and dismissive, she felt a cold wave of dread wash over her. Her pace quickened a little.

"That's right, so you'd better hurry up."

That made it imperative. She had to escape. She had to escape as soon as humanly possible. She sped up a little more.

"That's more like it. Keep that up and we should make it in time."

She sped up a little more, taking quick, long strides.

"Hey."

Fear's icy grip began to strangle her heart and her throat. She had to escape. It didn't matter that he had all of her stuff. If she didn't leave him, she was going to die, sooner rather than later.

"Hey, I'm talking to you."

She spun around and kicked hard. Her boot found his knee and the blow knocked him to the ground. She leapt over him and began to run, heart pounding, fighting a scream.

"Motherfucker!" he roared as he scrambled back to his feet and gave chase, "Get back here, goddammit!"

She sped through the woods back the way they came. She had to lose him. There had been a stream they'd come across about ten minutes ago. She could go through there. She burst out of the woods onto the bank of the stream and ran into the water. The mountain runoff chilled her to the bone, but she was too warm from her panic. _I might make just make it!_

He caught her about halfway across the stream.

"Come here!"

Steel arms wrapped around her waist, crushing her to him. He hauled her up in the air, her thrashing sending water spraying in all directions. He pulled her back toward the riverbank. She thrust her elbow toward the side of his head. Her aim was true. The blow connected, striking the plastic and metal of his combat helmet. His grip loosened and she thrashed even harder, trying to wiggle free of his grip.

One arm released her. But before she could exploit it, steely fingers grasped her wrist, brought her arm behind her, and pushed it up against her back. Pain lanced from her shoulder all the way to her fingertips.

She was completely at his mercy.

He dragged her the rest of the way to the riverbank and dumped her onto the sandy ground, spitting curses. She saw that he'd dumped his weapons so that they'd stay dry. She reached out for the closest gun. His boot landed on her wrist, trapping her hand. She heard a gun cock. She looked up to a drenched, furious Fredricks pointing her pistol at her head.

"Lost my fucking corn because of you running off like that," he snarled. He reached down to his hip, grasping at empty air. She remembered suddenly that he'd had a radio. His expression twisted even more. There was no doubt he was absolutely livid. His boot pressed down hard on her wrist. He bent down and retrieved his other weapons, putting them back where they belonged.

His hand grabbed her by the collar and he hoisted her up to her feet before shoving her northward. His hand kept a grip on her collar.

"Move."

* * *

The fire crackled loudly in the night, painting strange shadow productions onto the surrounding trees. It might have been pretty. Or spooky. But Elizabeth didn't really care right at that moment. She stared at the man who tended the fire. He sat on a log, bent forward with his hands tossing wood into the flames, his shotgun cradled in his lap. His helmet sat beside him, allowing her to see his shaved head. He sat back and sighed, turning the spit roasted rabbit. Elizabeth shifted on her log, rubbing her wrists, extending her hands toward the fire to warm them. Fredricks grunted as he reached behind him, yanked her pistol from his pants, and set it on the log right by his helmet. He turned the spit roast again.

Elizabeth's eyes fell on the pistol.

"Don't even think about it."

She looked up to see that his shotgun had been angled in his lap just so that the barrel pointed directly at her in a not-so-subtle threat. She saw that his finger rested just above the trigger, tapping the metal. His brown eyes glowed in the firelight as he glared at her, shaking his head almost imperceptibly.

"I need my gun back," she said flatly.

"That's too fucking bad."

He returned to the rabbit. Elizabeth sat and watched him sourly, "We're both gonna die out here with a fire like this. Someone could be sneaking up on us right now."

"If I don't have any energy, I can't outrun or outfight anything that catches us in the day. I'd be eating fucking corn in pitch black darkness if you hadn't tried to run off."

As time drew on, Elizabeth got the sneaking suspicion he wouldn't share any with her because of her escape attempt. That was a shame, because she was damn hungry. She rubbed her hands and looked at her pistol again.

"Look at it again and you won't get any of this rabbit."

_This fucking guy._

She gave him a glare. He'd tightened his leash on her since her escape attempt, and it wasn't that long to begin with. It was stupid, running off like that. Nice going, Elizabeth.

Fredricks continued his work on the rabbit, which was smelling better and better by the minute.

"Fucking soldier and his fucking rearguard," he muttered to himself, "Wouldn't be slogging through the fucking woods if it weren't for those fucks."

He pulled the rabbit off the spit. The rabbit's meat was a juicy reddish brown, dripping with its own grease. It sizzled as some of it dripped into the fire. Elizabeth could smell the grease and the fire's burning embers. She went from furious to ready to beg on her knees in half a second. She saw him reach over to the hunting knife embedded in the log on his other side and wrench it free from the wood. He gently removed the rabbit from the spit and sawed it neatly in two down the middle. He speared one of the halves with a long, sharpened stick she just noticed, and held it out toward Elizabeth. She snatched the meat right off the stick when it got close enough to her and tore directly into it.

Fredricks coughed, loudly. Too loudly to be an accident. Elizabeth looked up at him from her meal.

"Aren't you supposed to say something?" his hard look told her he was not joking.

She swallowed a hunk of meat and her pride, "Thank you."

"You're welcome," he said bitterly before diving into his own rabbit.

They both devoured their food in silence, the meager meal sating their starving stomachs. As she ate, Elizabeth stared at the pistol on the log.

_If I could just get to it..._

_Should you?_

She looked up at Fredricks. He was too focused on his rabbit meat. His shotgun pointed away from her as he shifted on the log to get better purchase on the rabbit meat.

_Now would be an excellent time._

_Are you fucking crazy? He'll kill you, not to mention it's poor form to shoot the guy who just gave you half his food._

_So? He and his friends burnt Jackson to the ground. They tried to take Ellie away and kill her! _

She looked from Fredricks to the gun. He was distracted. It was now or never.

Elizabeth chose now.

She lunged from her seat toward the pistol, hands outstretched. Fredricks reacted faster than she could blink. Her fingers brushed the barrel of the pistol right before something hard collided with the side of her head, knocking her aside and knocking her senseless. She scrambled to get to her feet and go for the gun, but as she got to her knees, a boot pushed against her back, forcing her back down on her front. She looked up over her shoulder to see Fredricks, his face contorted with anger, her pistol in one hand, his helmet in the other. She realized that he'd hit her with the helmet.

"What the fuck did I say?" he growled, livid, "Two fucking stunts in six fucking hours?!"

He tossed his helmet aside and turned her over on her back. As he bent forward, she snagged a rock in her fist. He grabbed her by the collar of her hoodie and jerked her to her feet, placing the barrel of her pistol to her forehead. His eyes burned with fury. She was about to strike him with the rock, but he pulled the hammer back on the pistol with a menacing click. His eyes glanced toward her armed hand.

"Try it."

She got a good look into his eyes. A good, long look. She assumed that the soldier's men had simply been assholes, no more than hunters or bandits or other survivors. People eeking out an existence in a crumbling world. But now, as she looked, she saw a lifetime of pain, murder, and torture. He was an automation of death. He could kill her with no hesitation. But she also saw the humanity, hiding like a small star in the swirling night sky.

He didn't want to have to kill her.

The stone fell from trembling fingers and hit the ground with a soft thump.

He pulled the pistol away from her head, de-cocked the pistol, and tucked it in his waistband before dragging her back to her seat and forcing her to sit down. He went over and scooped his meal from off the ground.

"Made me drop my rabbit, God dammit."

She looked him over with a new perspective. Maybe, just maybe, she'd survive.


	3. Chapter 3: Crippled, But Still Alive

Chapter 3: Crippled, But Still Alive

(Late Summer, Pacific Northwest)

_Clack._

_Clack. _

_Clack._

"This is so stupid."

_Clack._

_Clack._

_Clack._

"Where the fuck am I going?"

Ellie didn't know the answer to her own question. She had a basic plan, yes. Keep scavenging the surrounding area for fresh bandages or cloth that could be supplemented for bandages, and keep changing them out until her stump healed completely. But then what? Head back to Jackson? No, that was impossible. The soldier destroyed it, even though that ended up destroying him. But where else could she go? Boston? No, much too far away. Wherever she chose, the closer the better.

As she made her way down the street, she felt like kicking herself for not paying attention during Maria's town meetings. Every week, Maria would have a town meeting where she would address any concerns the townsfolk had, assign duties, and keep everyone updated on inventory shortages, if there were any. She would always end the meeting with a reminder of where their meet-up spot in the event of a town evacuation would be. Usually, by the time the meeting would close, Ellie was chomping at the bit to leave. It didn't help that in the last couple of months she found something else that distracted her.

Or, more accurately, someone. Elizabeth had been quite the distraction. When Elizabeth wasn't poking and prodding her, grinning when she got a reaction from Ellie, she was up doing announcements on the status of everyone's gear. Because of her knack for mechanics, Elizabeth had been in charge of repairs and the supply cache for anything related to gear people needed on outside patrols. Ellie would always watch when Elizabeth would deliver yet another warning to be careful with supplies as parts were harder and harder to come by, her usually soft voice taking on an almost aggressively stern tone. As nice and shy that she was, nobody fucked with Elizabeth's gear. Nobody.

Ellie really liked her. It might not have been love, not just yet, but Ellie definitely had something going for her. They related quite well. Elizabeth was not Riley. That was certain. Riley was rambunctious where Elizabeth was quiet. Riley took risks where Elizabeth played it safe. Riley was a tomboy, Elizabeth was an egghead. However, Elizabeth had strengths where Riley had had weaknesses. Elizabeth was more open about herself whereas Riley was more reserved. Elizabeth dealt with her trauma head on, while Riley hid under a casual veneer, only occasionally opening up in rare moments of vulnerability and trust. Riley was impulsive and rash where Elizabeth was calm and collected. But both of them were brave. Just in different ways.

Ellie mentally kicked herself again, and probably would have done so literally if she had two feet. She needed to stop comparing Elizabeth to a dead girl.

"I'm not just a dead girl, Ellie," she could hear Riley saying in the back of her mind. Ellie knew that. Riley was more to her than just a dead friend. She was her first love. Her first kiss. Her first time. Pretty much her first for everything. Probably one of her only friends at the Boston 'orphanage'.

The crutches continued to clack every time she made another step on the ancient pavement.

_Clack._

_Clack._

_Clack._

_Why the hell did I cut off my foot?_

It seemed like such a prudent thing to do at the time. It was infected, getting gangrenous. It had a hole through the arch, and the toes didn't have any feeling left in them, failing to respond as she tried to wiggle them. She looked down at her stump. She had a mixture of emotions regarding her missing foot. She was angry that she would never be able to walk, angry because it wasn't fair that she had to do it alone, angry that she was stupid enough to get shot that badly in the first place, angry because it hurt so badly even though it was nearly healed. She was scared that she couldn't outrun infected anymore, scared that her crutches would attract them with their noise, scared that if someone found her foot, they'd assume she was dead, scared that she'd never find Joel or Amanda or Elizabeth or Maria or Tommy. She was scared because she was wounded.

She was angry and scared because she was alone. This was not like last winter, where the fear of Joel passing kept her going. This was not like last winter, where she could run and fight. Joel wasn't there to bring her back when she lost herself. Joel wasn't there to keep her afloat.

_Shit, that's another thing that's going to get me killed. _

She had had some rudimentary swimming lessons from Joel. She could tread water. She could doggy paddle. But that was about it. She wasn't as quick a learner and she was so certain there would be time. She often tried to coerce Joel into letting her skip it in order to hang out with Elizabeth. Joel often let her go do it with a chuckle, saying, "Kiddo, you know you're gonna have to learn one of these days."

"I know," Ellie would usually whine, "But I promised Elizabeth I'd be there by three! And it's two-fifty!" or something along those lines. Joel would often let her off early, but make her promise to stay the whole time next time. Ellie would generally uphold that promise. If there was one thing she wanted to do, it was keep Joel's trust in her. But now Ellie wished she might have broken one of those promises. Just so Joel wouldn't be as lenient as he was.

As Ellie thought these things, she made her way down a winding road that slithered through the tall, thick pines, the concrete cracked and jutting up in several places, occasionally sunken beneath the husk of a long rusted car. The trees had dropped their pine cones all over the road, creating a hazardous space for her crutches. She was very careful with the placement of her crutches, hoping that they would not slip and send her flailing to the ground._ Wouldn't it just be fucking hilarious if I fell and broke my walking leg? _

She snorted.

"Yeah, that'd be just super," she grumbled to herself.

_Clack. _

_Clack._

_Clack._

It began to rain. A light sprinkle. It felt good on her face. It cooled her down. She made her way over to a rusted van and stopped. She leaned her crutches against it and sat down with her back against the cold metal. I just need to rest for a couple of minutes, she thought, I'm so hot, even though it's fall. She pressed a hand to her forehead. It was burning. Fever. That wasn't good. Wasn't good at all. In the zone, she had all these shots she had to get. Immunization shots, they were called. Vaccines. Funny. You could get shots for just about everything. Ellie used to be immune to everything. Now she was only immune to one thing. She rolled up her sleeve and looked at her bite. It was still healed, still pale, still ugly, and still jagged. She traced over the scars where spores had tried to push through her flesh and died, leaving those peculiar lumps of skin in their wake. She reached into her backpack and pulled out her water bottle. She took a long swig. The water wet her parched throat. She sighed as she set it down, letting the rain slowly fill it. When it was done, she capped it and stowed it in her backpack. She sat back and watched as the sky darkened above her, watched as the drops fell. It was beautiful, in a way. So much ruin below, yet the sky was untouched.

It was at that moment when she heard rustling in the underbrush on the other side of the van. She instinctively pulled her pistol, clutching it with both hands. More rustling, this time a bit closer. Her hands tightened around the grip as her heart began to pound. It could be anything out there, she thought, her fear rising. Then, she heard it. Clicking.

_Oh, fuck, not now,_ she thought,_ Not now, not now, not now!_

The clicking sounded off, like it was muffled. That was perhaps why she didn't hear it the first time it rustled the underbrush of the forest. She peeked out from around the van. She caught a glimpse of it staggering out of the woods and onto the desolate road. Whoever it was had been wearing a gas-mask when they turned. The fungus had pushed through the eyes of the mask, the straps around the head simply surrounded by and embedded into the sickly yellow growth. Its clicks were muffled by the long since broken respirator, which made them sound even more eerie.

Ellie ducked back behind the van. She considered her options. Even if it couldn't bite her neck, it could still grapple her and hold her down, shrieking until other infected showed up to finish the job. Considering its hands were caked with dried blood, it probably didn't need its mouth to kill her. She looked down at her pistol. It would take a few shots to put it down and those shots would be loud. She needed to be quiet. She put the pistol away quietly and pulled her switchblade as she heard its clicks getting closer and closer, hearing its old boots scraping against the pavement as it shuffled along.

_How are you going to sneak up and knife it without your crutches, genius?_

Eliminating the clicker was out of the question. She would have to draw it away and hope it would continue down the road. She looked around her. There was nothing within reach to throw. Dammit, Ellie, think! It came closer and closer, It was then that she saw her crutches.

_That's it! _

She grabbed one of the crutches and shifted so that she knelt pressed against the back of the van, facing the side the clicker where the clicker shuffled along. It stepped up to the bumper, turning its head back and forth, clicking. It took a step. Ellie stuck her crutch behind the extended leg and in front of the supporting leg. When the clicker made to take another step, its shin ran into Ellie's crutch. It fell forward, screeching and thrashing, smacking its masked face into the concrete, the plastic cracking. Ellie scrambled on hands and knees onto the clicker, switchblade in hand. She snapped the blade out and jammed it into the back of its neck. It writhed on the ground, flailing its arms, but then it lay still.

Ellie slowly withdrew her knife, wiping it clean on the clicker's decrepit clothing. She folded the blade back into the handle and slipped the knife back into her back pocket. She breathed a sigh of relief as she rested on her hands and knees beside the dead clicker. Glad that's over with. She shifted her right leg and placed her foot on the ground. She made to stand.

The throbbing in her left ankle reminded her that she would never stand without aid.

"Goddammit."

She extricated the crutch that was entangled in the clicker's legs and used it to help her stand. She hopped over to the van and grabbed her other crutch.

_I got really lucky. I hope I don't fuck it up next time. _

With one last look at the clicker's body, she continued her way down the street.

_Clack._

_Clack._

_Clack._


	4. Chapter 4: Chicago's Finest

**So sorry about the wait. I have been experiencing a massive amount of writer's block, specifically in writing from Joel's point of view. Also, a lot of other things cropped up in my life and I'm very sorry this is over a month late. I can't promise that I'll be punctual in updates, but I'm going to try. I have been working on other projects as well, fanfiction and other fiction writing, but that only accounts for a fraction of my time. **

**Unfortunately, this next chapter won't look over Joel, Amanda, Elizabeth, or Ellie. Instead, it's a flashback.**

**I really hope you enjoy it!**

* * *

Chapter 4: Chicago's Finest

(Chicago Quarantine Zone, 1 year after the outbreak of CBI, Summer)

Corporal Fredericks hated his new work detail. Desk jobs weren't desirable, especially jobs that weren't even involved in his unit. He had no education in this field. He was a rifleman, not a shrink. The army psych in his unit already had his hands full dealing with the other soldiers and refugees. He couldn't be fucked to help the kids that were barely under his jurisdiction. Fredricks sighed and looked at the kid sitting across from his desk.

The new kid at the Chicago QZ's 'temporary' Military Preparatory School was a little blonde-haired boy. His legs swung in his seat, the chair being just a little bit big for him. He stared at his scabby knees. His thin, gaunt face and hollow gaze reminded Fredricks too much of his squadmates. How he got here was just another tragic tale. A routine check-in had revealed that a woman drank herself into a stupor, passed out on her bed, and drowned in her own vomit. The woman's kid, the one sitting before him now, came quietly, but absolutely refused to tell anyone his name. Investigation into the dead mother revealed the child's name to be Adam Dreese. The minute the kid stepped through the doors, Fredricks knew that he was going to be a fucking problem.

So far, the kid's scabby knees were the most interesting thing in the world, as far as the boy was concerned.

"So, kid, what's your name?"

Adam continued to look down at his legs, not acknowledging the question posed to him.

_Maybe I can get him to open up a little._

"I'm Corporal Fredricks. If you want, you can just call me Fred."

His statement was met with silence, save for the slight rocking of the rusty legs of the chair. Fredricks sighed. Silent type. Typical. He picked up one of the files on his desk and flipped it open. The picture of the kid looked like a mugshot, that same gaunt, hollow-eyed stare looking into his soul from the shiny polaroid. He shivered before looking at the rest of the file.

"It says here that your name's Adam Dreese. Is that correct?"

Fredricks almost didn't catch it when the boy nodded.

"Well, Adam, I'm supposed to ask you a few questions. Would you answer them for me?"

The kid didn't answer. Fredricks sighed and flipped shut Adam's file, opening the other one on his desk. A single sheet of paper, lined with question his superior officer had given him to ask. Few of them were of the 'yes or no' variety. Normally, the files on a child answered most of these questions, as any sort of information had been passed down by adoption agencies, foster homes, hospitals, and court ordered psychological evaluations. But 'newbies,' like Adam Dreese, only had basic identification. Name, date of birth, height, weight, eye color, and hair color. Sometimes medical records, if their parents had had enough cash to pay for a doctor appointment now and then. But not in this case. Adam's psychological profile was completely unknown. Fredricks ran his hand over his face and closed his eyes.

_Fuck._

He began with the basics.

"Okay, Adam. First off, your file says that you have a father, but it doesn't state his occupation, phone number, address, or anything else we could have used to contact him before the outbreak. Now, if he snuck in here, he won't have papers. We can't find him, or otherwise he'd be here right now. Is he in the QZ?"

Silence.

"I'll put in a good word for him and we'll get him some papers if you can help me find him. Is he in the QZ?"

It was a long time before the kid shook his head.

"Do you know where he is?"

Nod.

"Where is he?"

Silence.

"Look, we're obligated to gout of the QZ and get him since you're not legally an adult yet. If you know where he is, that would save us a lot of time."

More silence. Fredricks remembered a high-school creative writing teacher telling him on one of his dismal stories to 'show, don't tell'. It seemed now that it would be more effective if that teacher had told Adam that. Fredricks reached into his desk and pulled out a map of Chicago. It had helped him on more than one occasion with silent students. They preferred to show. Not tell. He laid it out on his desk.

"Could you show me where he is?"

Adam leaned forward and studied the map with a furrowed brow. Suddenly, his hand leapt up from his side and pressed a finger to the paper. Fredricks followed it. The boy's finger had landed on a cemetery.

"He's dead?"

The kid nodded, scooting back into the chair and looking back down at his swinging feet. Fredricks folded up the map.

"I guess we can make an exception for going out and getting him," he grumbled as he set the map back in the drawer and slid it shut. He leaned forward on his desk and clasped his hands together.

"I'm sorry about this. I truly am. But could you tell me how he died?"

The kid took a long time to shrug. Fredricks looked down at his questionnaire. It seemed stupid that he had to ask all these questions when the kid wouldn't say a fucking word. He had an idea, but it hadn't rolled over too well with the last kid who'd come in. Looking at the scar on his hand, he sighed. He would risk a couple hours in the emergency room if he coud get this kid to open up. He reached into his desk and pulled out a sharpened pencil.

"Look, normally I don't do this, but it seems that you don't want to talk. So I won't make you," he said as he got up from his desk and leaned against it. He held both the pencil and the questionnaire on a clipboard out to Adam, who stared at them, his expression curious.

Fredricks remembered the last time he attempted something like this. He had a few questions he wanted to ask a kid, and he didn't want to have to sift through verbal backlash to get to the meat of his story. It wore on him more than he cared to admit. Truth be told, Fredricks wasn't much older than these kids, being only twenty. But he wore a uniform, so he was just a solider to them. Especially to that one kid, who had a record of violence, a couple of juvie raps, an attitude problem, and a complete hatred of authority. He should have known better than to hand the kid a sharp object. It should not have surprised him when the kid immediately took the pencil and jammed it into his hand. That was little over a month ago and in that time, the kid broke out and ended up getting shot, mistaken for a Stage One infected. By whom, Fredricks didn't know. He didn't want to know.

So now, as he stood, repeating this olive branch offering to Adam Dreese, he couldn't help but think he'd get another trip to the emergency room. But, instead of stabbing hi, the boy slowly slid the clipboard from Fredricks' hands and began to write silently. Fredricks sat back in his seat and watched the kid as he worked. He was unsure exactly what was going through the kid's head, but it was as if he were writing an essay. The scribbling of his pencil did not stop. Maybe he wasn't considering what the questions truly meant. But the scribbling continued uninterrupted, until suddenly, he stopped, looked at it, scribbled on the bottom, and set it and the pencil back on the desk before returning to look at his swinging legs.

Fredricks bent forward and picked up both the clipboard and the pencil, stowing away the latter and then looking over the former. The answers were…not what he was excepting. The words the kid used were intelligent and articulate, even though he looked like none of these things as he quietly sat folded in on himself, refusing to speak. Fredricks knew officers who wrote less clearly than this. The kid even wrot e a signature at the end of the questionnaire. However, the answers themselves unnerved Fredricks. Adam wrote about horrifyingly traumatic instances in his past with the casual disdain one used for mild inconveniences. This was quite disturbing, as most children who lived in an abusive, alcoholic environment tended to think in a cloud of negative self-judgment. Not Adam. He didn't seem to be autistic either. He wrote his answers as if it were some official report, stating nothing but facts. It was as elusive as it was informative.

"So, Adam," Fredricks finally said, trying his best not to sound as confounded as he was, "Is there anything you'd like to ask me or tell me? Anything that, perhaps, your parents might have shouted down at home?"

Adam's feet stopped swinging as he looked up at Fredricks.

"Anything at all. It's okay. What you say will be just between you and me," Fredricks said when Adam continued to stare at him, "Anything you want. Go ahead. You can tell me."

Fredricks began to count the seconds as Adam stared at him. As time ticked by, Fredricks got the feeling that the kid was sizing him up. Assessing him. For what, Fredricks didn't know. Didn't really want to know, either. He continued to count and got to sixty-three before the kid shook his head like a statue coming to life. Fredricks sighed. _Of course._

"I guess now it's time to show you to your bunk. Your stuff's already been moved there," he said, getting up from his desk. Adam hopped off of the chair and plodded after him, head aimed at the ground. Once Fredricks showed him to his living quarters, he didn't give any more thought to Adam Dreese. Now, he was just a face in the crowd. But, as was his job, Fredricks had to keep at least one eye on the new kid. At least until he settled in.

When Adam arrived, he seemed to make a few enemies and friends. New kids in the Military Preparatory School always did this, though in Adam's case it was more friends than enemies. Pretty soon, he had something of a gang around him. That wasn't unusual around charismatic people, but Adam wasn't the charismatic one. That was Brett Parker, a rambunctious fifteen year old who had taken the kid 'under his wing'. But Fredricks didn't usually concern himself with the politics of the children. As long as Adam Dreese seemed to be fitting in, that was all he cared. And, about two days after Adam, two more kids came in on a bus from Cleveland. Adam was old news.

* * *

One day, about three weeks after Adam had arrived, a fight broke out in the cafeteria. Fredricks and a couple squadmates broke it up to find that one kid, named Travis Milton, had been seriously wounded with the business end of a knife. Brett Parker turned out to be the kid who held the knife and ended up getting locked up in juvie for a few weeks while the other kid spent time in the hospital. Fredricks, as the highest ranking soldier on hand, had to write the incident report. He interviewed all the witnesses, most of whom all said the same thing. The kid pissed Brett off and Brett stabbed him in a rage. No one knew where the knife came from. Or what exactly had provoked Brett to stab the kid in the first place.

Then, he interviewed Brett's gang and got the same damn story. Travis did something Brett didn't like and Brett retaliated. Most people in Fredricks' position might have had enough to go on, but Fredricks had always been detail oriented. This didn't make sense. School-yard and cafeteria brawls were a dime a dozen, but a stabbing was nearly impossible. Blades of any kind were contraband, and most kids weren't old enough or sharp enough to make a prison shank, let alone smuggle in a knife. There were so many questions that everyone answered with a shrug. How did Brett get the knife? What did Travis do to piss off Brett so much he would assault him with a deadly weapon, in broad daylight, surrounded by soldiers?

It slowly dawned on him that maybe he should investigate further, and that perhaps the victim would have more answers than anyone else.

When Travis Milton felt well enough, Fredricks decided to visti him. When he came in, the kid tried to situp and salute, the proper greeting for a superior.

"No need for that, you'll rip your stitches," Fredricks told him, "Travis Milton, I'm Corporal Fredricks. I'm investigating your…'confrontation' with Brett Parker," he grabbed a nearby chair, spun it around, and sat, leaning against the back and crossing his leg to get better support for his clipboard, "Travis, I'd like to ask you a few questions about what happened in the cafeteria."

"Yes, sir," the kid croaked, voice cracking from lack of use. Or illness. It was most likely the former, but the grunge accumulating in the hospitals lately made a strong case for the latter.

"First of all, the docs say you're healing well, is that right?"

"They said I should be out of here in a few days."

"Good. You feeling better?"

"Kinda."

"Okay. You feel comfortable talking about what happened in the cafeteria?"

"Not really, but I'll tell you what I can."

"Okay. What provoked the initial confrontation?"

"I don't know," Travis said unhelpfully. He looked away surreptitiously. He was lying.

"I want to help you. I really do, Travis. But I can't help you if you don't tell me what's going on."

"I said I don't know."

"You're safe now, Travis. Brett Parker's hit his last strike. He's going out into general population as soon as-"

"I'm not safe."

That took Fredricks back, "Why don't you feel safe?"

Travis looked at him with wide eyes. Apparently, it had just slipped out unintended. Regardless, it was all out in the open now. Fredricks repeated his question. Travis kept his eyes trained on the window, as if he were looking for something that may be eavesdropping. Finally, he spoke.

"Brett was a hotshot for a long time. Like a couple of years, I guess. But then this new kid shows up, and he's kind of an asshole. Butting in on his turf, fucking with him in class, that kind of thing. Brett's like, 'Hey, I'm gonna get outta here soon, might as well show this kid what's what.' He gets his gang up on him, but then this kid worms his way out of it, says he's like, sorry or whatever and just wants to hang out with the big kids. Brett takes him takes him in, to try to 'teach' him how not to act like an asshole. Then Brett suddenly goes totally apeshit, just jumps on me and starts wailing on me. I didn't even know he had a knife until you guys pulled him off me," as he told the story, Travis got more and more tense, looking around, his voice growing softer.

_Bingo_.

"Tell me about this kid," he said, leaning forward. Immediately Travis paled.

"This kid…this kid is really fucking smart. He's like a genius. But he's also super paranoid. There were a couple of girls who got fucked up on weed, said some shit about the kid. Next day, their whole stash of joints is gone. Someone snuck into their room and took it from 'em, leaving a note saying shit like, 'I know where you sleep.' Then those fucking joints show up in the room of some asshole who was constantly giving him shit. Right before a room inspection. The asshole gets hauled off to lockup and as he's leaving the kid fucking smiles and waves at the dude! Then there was Brett. Brett and the kid get into an argument 'cause the kid doesn't wanna steal a dirty magazine Brett wants. Finally, the kid says okay, but then he says that Brett would owe him afterward. Brett doesn't pay up. Now he's in lockup, too."

"For stabbing you," Fredricks pointed out. Travis shook his head.

"Brett did it because that kid got him to do it. I accidentally knocked that kid's breakfast tray over once like a week ago. Every time I walked by him after that, he would just look at me like he was trying to figure me out. It was fucking creepy. Then, Brett goes apeshit on me, screaming about me stealing his porno."

Fredricks leaned forward, the wheels turning in his mind. The kid was new and orchestrated a perfect revenge spree on people who messed with him even remotely. He also had Travis Milton scared out of his mind and seemed to be a great thief who was able to hide his prizes and get other people in trouble for it. Fredricks kicked himself for ot paying more attention to child politics, as this kid seemed to be a master at it. Fredricks had a sneaking suspicion who it was. But he needed it to be official. His question was blunt.

"Who is this kid?"

Travis paled even further and clammed up.

"Travis, I need you to tell me his name. If I can't get you to tell me his name, give me some detail to go on. Something that helps me pick him out in a crowd."

No matter what Fredricks said after that, Travis didn't say a word. Eventually, Fredricks gave up and went back to his office to review his evidence. It wasn't encouraging. Brett did this at someone's behest, but who it was eluded him.

There was a knock on his door.

"Enter."

"Sir?"

Fredricks looked up to the soft-spoken voice and saw Adam Dreese standing in his doorway, saluting. Fredricks returned his salute.

"Adam. What can I do for you?"

"You told everyone to come to you if we had something to say about the fight in the cafeteria?"

"I did. Do you have something to tell me?"

"Travis stole a contraband magazine from Brett. Brett gets really mad when people steal stuff from him. That's why Brett went after him."

Fredricks was taken aback. This was the first time Adam had actually spoken to him.

"Thanks, Adam. We'll look into it. Dismissed."

Adam looked at him. Stared. Again. And it was the same kind of stare as the one from when they first met. Not a challenge, but certainly an examination. Whatever Adam's verdict would be, Fredricks didn't find out, as Adam suddenly saluted and left.

A search of Travis' room revealed a salacious magazine, just as Adam had said. It lined up. All too much.

"Son of a bitch."

Adam Dreese was now Fredricks' prime suspect.

* * *

**robertskycard**


	5. Chapter 5: Lost

**Here we go! Joel's first POV chapter! I think that a lot of fanfic writers don't necessarily do Joel's character justice. That's not to say that they're bad writers, it's just that Joel is fucking hard to write. Because this is a video game and not a book, we as writers can't just borrow the creator's style. We've got to analyze the character, see what makes them tick. And Joel is extremely difficult because he only really shows his true colors and expresses himself at the most heart-wrenching parts of _The Last of Us_. Ellie's an open book and OCs are completely conceptualized, but Joel has battened down the hatches, so to speak. So, with those minimal glimpses into his character, I tried to stay true to him without making it up as I went along.  
**

**So here's chapter 5!**

* * *

Chapter 5: Lost

(Four days after the fall of Jackson, Late Summer, Pacific Northwest)

"Joel, watch out!"

Joel spun just in time for the board to connect with his nose. The blow sent him sprawling, landing hard on asphalt and concrete. Someone pounced on him. His attacker was dressed in military gear, holding a broken board, its end pointed from the fracture. He looked meaner than a rabid dog.

"You motherfucker!" he roared, stabbing down.

Joel caught his wrist with one hand and seized his throat with the other. Fingers fastened around his own neck and squeezed. Joel'd been choked before. The trick to getting out was not to panic. He let go of the man's throat and instead grappled for his face, pushing his head back. The man's head began to turn, but his grip tightened on Joel's neck. Joel reared his hand back and slammed his fist just under the man's nostrils. He reared back and fell off. Joel scrambled up and pulled out a shiv. He grabbed the man by the shirt and shoved the crude blade into the man's neck. He gurgled as blood spurt from his wound. Joel pulled on the shiv, but it snapped, leaving jagged metal poking out of the man's neck as he fell onto his back, twitching.

Joel looked up to see Tommy grappling with another combatant. He yanked his pistol from his pants and took aim at the attacker, but they were shifting positions as they fought over Tommy's rifle. The rifle was slowly turning toward Tommy. Joel rushed the man and lunged, tackling him and knocking him to the ground. He scrambled to wrap an arm around the man's throat. The man struggled for air, thrashing and kicking. Joel was nearly finished with the man, his fighting becoming weak, when someone roared at Joel.

"Get off him, you prick!"

A man with a machete rushed at him. Joel couldn't defend himself and his attacker was too close.

A rifle cracked, the shot echoing in the woods around. The man's chest exploded in fine spray of red, followed by a steady stream as if someone had poked a hole in a water balloon. His machete clattered when it fell from his hand and landed on the pavement. He stood for a moment before falling. Maria stood behind him a good distance away, the barrel of her rifle smoking.

"Maria!" Tommy rushed past Joel as he ran to meet his wife. Some good news, finally. Joel finished off the man he was strangling and cleared himself from the body, bending down and placing his hands on his knees for a breather.

_That was too damn close. _

Time for an injury assesment. His raspy breathing caught his attention. That and the chest pain. His chest hurt with every breath. He didn't remember getting hit in the ribs, but when he lifted his shirt to check, sure enough he was already beginning to bruise. He checked each rib individually. The ones that had taken the blow hurt to touch, but no fractures. Ice on it and he'd be fine. His back hurt a little, but there was no intense burning in his spine or tingling in his limbs. He was fine on that account. He felt his nose. Crooked. Again. Blood leaked from his nostrils and the bridge of his nose into his mouth. He tasted the iron. He spat, grabbed the end of his nose, and twisted. It went back into position with a pop that shot pain up his sinuses and made his eyes water. He stood up and wiped the reactionary tears from his eyes and blood from his face.

"You okay, Joel?" Tommy called over to him.

In terms of injury, Joel was no worse for wear than he ever was. Give him a couple of days and some sound treatment and he would be fine. He hurt all over right now, and some of it would linger for longer than it should, but that is the price one pays for age. Something, somewhere, hurts when one gets older. It's a fact of life, one he learned to deal with. Physically, he was not just okay. He was great.

But he was most definitely not okay. He set his jaw grimly, "I'm fine."

"Thank God I found you two," Maria said breathlessly, "You're the first friendly faces I've seen in three days."

She strode over to the dead men on the pavement, giving one corpse a nudge with her boot, "These hills are just swarming with bandits, and now that the soldier's men are running every which way, I'm not so sure the interstate off-ramp was such a good idea."

"Is that right?" Joel grumbled sarcastically to himself. He had mentioned time and again that they should have built panic rooms. Dig pits in the back yards like tornado shelters and cover them with dirt and vegetation from outside Jackson. Perhaps have someone run a wire between each pit and teach someone from each family or room group how to use Morse code. It didn't really matter now. His suggestion was shot down when Tommy said, "Relax, Joel, we're safe here."

_Nothin's safe, baby brother. Only safer._ He should have said it out loud instead of in his head. Now Ellie was gone.

Ellie.

That simple name brought a hundred feelings to the surface. Anger. Guilt. Shame. Pride. Hope. Fear. And the need to leave and get to searching.

_She needs me. _

_She can handle herself._

_She's ain't gonna last._

_She's a tough little girl._

_I gotta find 'er. _

_You will._

_She's my baby girl._

_She ain't _your_ baby girl._

That was what stung the most. No matter how close they had become, no matter how they acted toward each other, Ellie was someone else's child. Ellie didn't talk much about her mother, but Joel knew that the poor woman was dead before Ellie even knew her. As for her father, she didn't know if he was dead or alive. She said it didn't really matter to her when Joel brought it up. She said that as far as she was concerned her birth father wasn't her real father. Joel wondered what would happen if her 'real' father showed up. Joel realized it wouldn't have mattered. If the man tried to hurt Ellie in any way, Joel would probably have killed the man and left the body to rot in the woods.

_Another person you'd murder to keep her safe. Her own flesh and blood, too._

He considered Ellie his daughter. For all intents and purposes, Ellie _was_ his daughter. He wouldn't give her up. Not for the Fireflies, not for Marlene, not for Jackson, not for anyone.

_This was the rendezvous. Where the hell is everyone?_

_Dead, most likely. _

That realization normally wouldn't have terrified him as much as it did. If it weren't for Ellie...

_God, I hope she made it somewhere safe. _

"Joel."

He looked up to Tommy, "Hm?"

"I said, we should go to the dam, see if there's any survivors holed up there. Sound like a good idea to you?"

_Should have gone there in the first place._

"Sure."

"Let's get a move on, then."

Joel sighed, rolled his shoulders once, and stepped into place behind Tommy. He'd spent twenty years in a haze. For once, it had been clear. It was beginning to come back.

* * *

(The following evening)

The haze was over him a lot sooner than he expected. Joel felt deaf. He saw Tommy and Maria speaking, saw their lips move. Saw them glance, concerned, over at him. A lot. He followed them. They'd ask him things. He'd answer. Did he process what he heard? No. They might as well have been taking him to the moon. That night, as they set camp, Joel sat down against a tree at the edge of camp. Maria set her stuff down near the center of the little clearing and climbed into her sleeping bag. Tommy joined her.

Joel kept watch half the night. The quiet moans coming out of Tommy's sleeping bag left no room for imagination. In Jackson, Joel might have felt embarrassed to be so close to such a lewd, if quiet, display of affection. He might have told them to get a room. Wolf whistled. Cracked a joke. He'd been getting good at jokes lately. Amanda always laughed at them. Ellie came up with better ones. Now, he just felt numb.

A while after things got quiet, Tommy came out of his sleeping bag. He sat down beside Joel.

"Hey," he said quietly.

Joel gave him a curt nod. They sat in silence for a time. Tommy spoke.

"I've been thinkin', tomorrow we're gonna get up to the dam. I bet some folks beat us to the highway, saw that nobody was there, decided the dam's the best place to go. It's fortified. Maria said she saw a few tracks headin' that way."

Joel didn't respond.

"Might be we find your girl there."

"Ellie."

He looked up at Tommy.

"Her name's Ellie."

"We'll find 'er, Joel."

I hope to God we do.

They sat silently some more. Then Tommy decided to open his mouth.

"Joel, I gotta ask you, you went through help and high water to take 'er to the-"

" No."

"You said at Jackson the Fireflies were gonna-"

"No."

"Goddammit, Joel, I need you to trust me with things."

"I ain't gonna talk about it, Tommy. It's done."

Joel got up and went to the other end of the clearing. Nobody in Jackson had known the truth about what happened with the Fireflies. Joel had worked hard to keep it that way. Well, almost no one knew. There was one who had coaxed the truth from him. A woman he'd grown to love.

Amanda.

He sat down, closed his eyes, and tried to sleep. It wouldn't come easily, but as it finally wafted over him, he recalled the first time he had told the truth about the Fireflies.

* * *

(Three weeks before the fall of Jackson)

They lay naked in each other's arms, her head resting on his chest. Joel felt her lips when Amanda smiled. The warm flesh, the slick, cooling sweat, a glow in his heart. It felt so alien. Like some sort of distant dream. Two women had laid like that, once. More than two decades ago for one, a year ago or more for the other. He didn't want to repeat their names.

"I'm gonna have to shave this," Amanda said with a smirk, bringing him out of his head.

"Uh-uh, ain't happenin'."

He couldn't help but smile.

"You're not the one who has to rest their head on it. It's warm, but its gotta come off," she said as she lifted her head to rest her chin on him. He ran a hand through her hair.

"Nope," he said, smiling for the first time in what felt like years. Perhaps it was years.

"You worried I'm gonna cut your nipples off?" she said with a grin.

God, he could get lost in that smile.

"Nah, I ain't worried."

"So, it's fine then. I'll get the razor."

She started to get up, but he pulled her in tighter.

"I ain't lettin' you go just yet," he grumbled with a smile. She smiled with him.

"It is kind of comfy in a coarse, scratchy way. It's kind of like sleeping on a scrubbing pad," she ran her nails through it and over his chest for emphasis.

"I get it, you want it shaved. I'll take the razor to it in the mornin'."

"No, don't, " she said suddenly, "I like it."

"Really," he said, sensing a lie.

"I do!"

"Uh-huh."

"Plus it'll be winter soon."

"Sure."

She kissed him lightly on the lips, brushing the coarse hairs just above them.

"Joel," she said, "I don't really care that much if you're as hairy as a bear. I just like poking fun at you for it," she stayed silent for a moment before grinning, "Even if they sometimes get stuck in my mouth."

They both laughed then and she rested her head back on his chest.

"I love hearing you laugh, Joel," she said, hand lazily stroking his chest, "If I could make you laugh all day, I would."

"Is that so?"

She nodded, "I'm not the one who does though."

"And who does?"

"Ellie."

Her answer shouldn't have surprised him, but it did. He remained silent. She gave him a concerned look.

"That girl is special, Joel. She's a handful, kinda mouthy sometimes, but she's got spirit."

"Yes, she does."

Amanda propped herself up on her elbows, "You know, when I first met her, there was this...sadness behind her eyes. She smiled and laughed, but I just couldn't shake the feeling there was something else. She finally opened up to me about Riley."

They stayed in silence for a moment.

"There's something on her mind. We've all lost people, Joel, but this thing with Riley is eating her up, whether she wants to admit it or not. Something just doesn't add up."

Joel knew what she was going to ask about before the words came out of her mouth.

"What happened with the Fireflies, Joel?"

He sighed. He wanted to tell her the truth. Amanda hated it when people lied to her, and Joel didn't want to lie to her. But if Ellie heard. If Ellie knew. Then...he couldn't even think about it. He had to wave her off.

"I already told you what happened."

He knew he made a mistake as soon the words left his mouth. Her brow furrowed and she frowned.

"Yeah. And it's bullshit," she snarled before rolling off of him. He knew better than to try to pull her back. She sat up at the edge of the and began to dress quietly.

"Amanda?" he said, sitting up. She ignored him. Her shirt was on and she was already pulling on her pants.

"Wait," he put a hand on her shoulder. She stopped dressing, but he could tell she was a moment away from shoving his hand off and leaving.

"I don't mean to lie to everyone."

She sniffed. Was she crying?

"Yeah, well, you are. It must be pretty fucking bad if you're not willing to tell me or Ellie," she stood up and pulled her pants on. She didn't stalk off. She did turn around and take his hand. She looked into his eyes earnestly, "Joel, whatever it is, you have got to tell her. It's eating her up inside."

"She can't hear the truth from me," he said. He felt her begin to pull away and added, "'cause it's my damn fault."

She froze and turned. Just then, the whole story came spilling out, from the university, the mountain resort, the cannibals, all the way to Salt Lake City. He told about the giraffes, the picture of him and his daughter Ellie gave him, the tunnel of infected, the close call with the clicker, the tunnel full of water, and finally the hospital. He told her the truth of what the Fireflies planned to do to Ellie to get the vaccine, what he did to save her. He didn't need to explain the lie, but he did anyway. The whole time, Amanda listened. She sat back down early on in the story, and when Joel was finished, she had her hand on his shoulder. After he was silent for a time, she spoke.

"You didn't have a choice whether you could save your daughter."

He nodded.

"But you could save Ellie."

He nodded again, and for the first time in a long time, he felt tears. Felt sobs. Felt all the sorrow, the anger, the despair, and the fear of the last twenty years finally break. He wept bitterly. He curled up and cried. Amanda pulled him to her, let his head rest on her shoulder, ran her fingers through his hair with comforting strokes.

"I know you're trying to protect her, Joel," she murmured into his ear, "but you owe it to her to explain it. It's not my place to tell, so she needs to hear it from you. Maybe not now, maybe not tomorrow, but you need to tell her what you did and why you did it."

He nodded. She kissed his hair.

"It's going to be okay, Joel," she whispered, "It's going to be okay."

He believed her.

* * *

(Five days after Jackson's fall)

Running, running through hallways, running through a burning town, running up and down hills, a girl in his arms with red hair, blonde hair. Eyes shut, eyes open, glassy, lifeless. Gunfire, bullets whipping past him, biting into his shoulder. Frantic crying. Blood pouring over his hands. A little hand in his. A small chamber, a man in a mask and a rifle, a woman with a pistol.

_"Sir...they've got a little girl."_

_"It's what she'd want. And you know it."_

A gunshot.

Joel awoke with a start, a half-remembered nightmare of an atrocity already fading from his mind. Tommy and Maria were already awake and packing away their gear when Joel stood up to help them. He never slept well. No matter how long he rested, no matter what kind of bedding, he always woke up exhausted. And the rough ground was especially poor on his back. He bent backward and the tension released with a mighty crack.

"We headin' to the dam today?" was the first question out of his mouth.

"Actually…we wanted to talk to you," Tommy replied, scratching his scraggly beard, "Now, this might not be news you want to hear, so you might wanna sit down for a minute."

Joel sat down casually, but felt ice in his veins. Maria knelt down beside him. This wasn't going to be good, he could just tell. Her voice was tender and gentle.

"Joel," she said, "I had to run into Ghost Town to evade pursuers and I...found this."

She pulled up a blood-soaked Converse sneaker with a ragged hole in the sole and the top.

_No._

"There...was a severed foot inside it. Shot all to hell. It was rotting and...I'm sorry, Joel."

_No, no, no._

"There was a blood trail out of the building, but it...I lost it, Joel. It didn't look good."

_No, goddammit, no. Not again._

"I think we have to face the facts. She's gone, Joel."

"You don't know that," Joel growled. Tommy put a hand on his shoulder.

"Joel," Maria said kindly, eyes watering with tears, "It's going to be okay."

_No, no, no, no, no, no, no._

"It's going to be okay."

He didn't believe her.


	6. Chapter 6: Back to the Grind

**So we've gotten to Chapter 6. There's a couple things I want to get off my chest here. First off, I'm sorry for not responding to the latest reviews. If it seems like I don't care about them, nothing could be further from the truth. Your insight is much appreciated and I am so glad to have dedicated followers like you. I don't always respond as often or as promptly as I should, but never think that I don't appreciate your feedback. **

**Second, I need someone that I can bounce off ideas with, someone who can double check my double checked grammar, someone who can assist me. I have a general plan for this fic and a definitive ending, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to finish it because I'm not sure about the middle part. **

**So, in short, I would like a beta. I'm not the best about responding, but I promise to be as prompt as I can, and the fact that someone else is in on it is probably just the kick in the ass I need to get really working on this. **

**If you would like to be a beta for this story, please shoot me a PM.**

**Now, with that said, now on to Chapter 6. I really hope you enjoy it. Things are starting to pick up just a bit.**

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Chapter 6: Back to the Grind

(Late Summer, Pacific Northwest)

Amanda crept through the underbrush. She kept low, meticulously studying every detail of her environment. The trees pressed in around her, vines, thorns, bushes, fallen leaves, and fallen sticks crinkling quietly under her feet with each step. Leaves and branches whispered over her jacket as she moved, rifle poised in her hands, braced against her shoulder. She saw another one of Ellie's bloody footprints and carefully stepped around it. Droplets of blood trailed between each print. Each one she found felt like a knife in the chest. But it also gave her hope. She was on the right track. The problem was that Ellie wasn't. She wasn't heading toward the highway. Each step brought her closer and closer o Ghost Town.

As evening fell over the valley and the deep golden glow of the sun pierced through the autumn leaves, Amanda came within sight of Ghost Town. She crouched low and peered through the underbrush, rifle pointed at the nearest building. She could tell the tracks lead in that direction, but she wasn't taking any chances. If Ellie popped her head up in one of those boarded up windows, Amanda would breathe a sigh of relief. If a clicker or one of the soldier's men appeared, she'd shoot.

She was glad she had made this preparation instead of blindly running up to the building. A runner, a young woman with bloodied hands and mouth, staggered out of the front door, its strangled moans and screams carrying over to her ears. She took aim, lining the creature up in her sights. Usually at this range she would have no problem. But her left-hand fingers screamed at her in blinding pain any time she pressed them too hard. She had to cradle the rifle in the crook of her elbow, her lack of experience in using such a stance making the barrel sway oh so gently. Her finger slid silently over the trigger as she debated whether or not to squeeze it.

_"Is the shot worth the risk?"_

Her father would always ask her that. Of course, when he was teaching her to shoot, she had always thought it was worth it and would squeeze the trigger. Half the time she would miss. Half the time she wouldn't. It stayed that way until her father started wagering little chores he normally did himself. One or two wasn't so bad, but with the amount she had normally missed, it seemed almost punitive. She began to take more careful shots, began to take in to account the wind, the distance, the type of weapon in her hand and the caliber of the bullet in the chamber. Once she became familiar with it, she became more and more accurate until her father had to make tricky, convoluted bets in order to get her to do any of his little chores.

The memory brought a tiny smile to her lips. But it also made her think. She had to weigh the risk versus reward. She had two bullets and she needed them for emergencies. If she pulled the trigger, every infected in the area would hear the shot and come running. She hadn't seen any on her trek here, but that didn't mean they weren't nearby. If she did shoot, she would kill the runner if she hit it, but that was a big if. With the way her rifle was wavering, she wasn't sure she could pull off the shot. If she missed, the runner would be the first to get her. Amanda may have strangled a few of them in Jackson, but if a bunch of them swarmed her, she didn't have the stamina, the ammo, and the strength to fend them off.

She decided it was too risky to take the shot.

Amanda removed her finger from the trigger and watched the runner as it staggered down the street in the general direction of Jackson. She knew why, too. The soldier's tank had blown the belltower to pieces and the great boom that came with that that explosion echoed all across the valley. The infected loved loud noises. This one's a bit late to the party, she thought wryly. She thought for sure she would have gotten used to seeing that lurching gait and hearing those eerie screams the runners made. But it was still unnerving. They were always unnerving.

When it was gone, she crept forward until she met the edge of the forest, peeking out from behind a tree. Ellie's bloody footprints led to the same building the runner had shuffled out of only moments ago. Amanda felt ice flow through her veins, the hairs standing up on the back of her neck.

_Don't be dead. Please don't be dead._

Shivering, she crept out of the woods onto the street, standing up. No threats in sight. She continued forward, stepping across the broken pavement stained with Ellie's blood, each step closer leaving her colder and colder. She got to the front door of the building and froze. Her hand instinctively drew her pistol from the waistband of her pants. She held it in front of her. Before her, the interior of the building was dark, and the foul stench of rotting flesh wafted out the open, broken door, accompanied with the buzz of flies.

"Psst! Ellie!" she hissed, hoping that Ellie had hidden inside.

No response. There was only one thing left to do.

She stepped into the building.

The sight that greeted Amanda was a familiar one, a sight that she had seen more times than she could count. But the fact that it could be someone she cared about tied her guts in knots. There were bloody footprints in many directions, all over the old tile floor. Ancient bloodstains mingled with fresh ones, confusing the scene. A ravaged, dry corpse sat in the corner, skeletal hands clutching a badly rusted knife, eyeless sockets staring at the bloody floor. This place had been a shop, once. Of what Amanda couldn't tell. Frozen yogurt or ice cream, maybe, or sandwiches. But that was trivial. The centerpiece of the room was not the bare counter, but the tables. A few had been pushed together to make a single, long one. Blood coalesced into a massive pool at one end, the sides of the table dripping, viscous and black, pooling below the table. A stained saw lay discarded in the pool.

And on top of it all rested...something, something that stunk like death, something that was buzzing with shiny green flies. Amanda stepped closer, heart pounding. The swarm of bugs seethed over their prize. She swiped it at the flies and they scattered in a cloud. What the flies had been dining on was a foot, black and stinking with rot, oozing thick black, viscous fluids from its ankle, white maggots glistening and writhing in pockets of flesh. The rotting skin was ragged where the saw's teeth had bit into it, but the cut was straight. The foot itself hid inside a black sneaker, the center of both foot and shoe sporting a ragged hole, stained with darkening blood. Amanda felt a chill down her spine.

_Jesus Christ, Ellie. What happened to you?_

Within a few moments, the flies returned to their feast. Amanda stepped outside, feeling bile rise up in her throat. She sat down in the doorway, letting the nausea and fear wash over her. She blew air out steadily, in and out, in and out.

_Oh God, Ellie, what happened? What happened?_

She wished she had some alcohol, something to wash down her fear.

_Where's the rest of her?_

Amanda paused. Infected didn't generally eat once the fungus overrode that part of the brain. Only those infected within a week or two still had any appetite at all, and with their high metabolism, they were ravenous enough to drive them to...to...

_A horde of tents, white snow and red, gunshots, shrieks, her father screaming at her, "Get out, Amanda! Run!" More gunshots, screaming, tents burning, people running, scattered in the cold night, the howl of infected. A girl's hand sticking up from between writhing bodies, her face white with terror as the infected, four of them, tore her apart. She screamed and screamed and screamed, "Help me! Help meeeeeeeee!" Amanda fumbled for her gun, dropped it in the snow, snatched it up. Her wild shots made one turn, its teeth clenched around an intestine, blood dripping into a greying beard. _

Amanda held her nausea in check long enough to go to the side of the building before retching. She shook as her gut spasmed over and over and over again. Little more than bile came up. She sank to her knees, shaking, holding her belly, tasting the acid in her mouth. She wiped her lips with a trembling hand when she finally stopped heaving. She pulled her water bottle from her backpack and dumped a little water in her mouth, swished, and spat before taking a long drink. She knelt for a long time, her forehead pressed against the cold wall.

_Get it together, Amanda. Count to ten. Remember? Count to ten._

She counted to ten, slowly, feeling her quaking limbs slowly still. With each count, she breathed, in through the nose and out through the mouth. By the last number, she stood on her own two feet, ready to face the building again. Amanda tried to go over facts, what she could conclude from the scene, following the tracks closely from where they left the forest.

_So, you ran out of the woods and into the shop. You were scared. Nothing was chasing you, but you were running. You didn't even slow down to check. You probably didn't even know that you were injured yet._

Amanda made her way to the doorway, meticulously following each step to puzzle out the story of Ellie's flight, and what transpired inside the building. The first print inside the building was more well defined.

_You stood for a moment, maybe taking in your surroundings. Or you looked down and saw you were injured. You went around behind the counter. You were searching for something, but you were hurrying. What were you looking for? _

Amanda followed the tracks to the back, noticing a bloody handprint on the door. The place had been ransacked, every little piece thrown about. There wasn't much, if any, dust on the debris, meaning they had been thrown from their resting places recently. There were dust lines that indicated as much. However, the destruction only went back so far, and the bloody footprints turned and went back to the counter.

_You were looking for something, but you were panicking. You found what you were looking for and you returned to the front._

Amanda went back out to the front. The tracks became a little more confusing, as they overlapped and seemed to go in numerous directions.

_If you had what you needed, why do all this pacing?_

The drag marks beside the tables pushed together gave her the answer.

_The tables were separate. You pushed them together. Why?_

Amanda looked at the foot, buzzing with flies, looked at the discarded saw, covered with blood, and suddenly understood.

_Your foot was injured. You didn't think you could save it, or it got infected running through the muck of the woods. Probably both. So you cut it off. You were looking for a saw, bandages, maybe something to help you stand after you were done. How did you leave?_

There were no drag marks. It was as if Ellie had cut off her foot and disappeared. Amanda studied the marks on the tile carefully and found strange, circular rings of blood, each pair growing less pronounced as they neared the door. Little droplets of blood lay in between them favoring one side, a bloody footprint favoring the other. Like the rings, it became less pronounced with each step, but the droplets continued on.

_Crutches. That's how you kept going. You cut off your foot, tied off or bandaged the stump, and left._

Amanda breathed a sigh of relief. Ellie was alive. But that was not enough. Ellie was seriously injured, crippled, and out there alone. If Amanda didn't find her, she most likely wasn't going to last long. _She's strong, though. She's smart. And she's got spirit._ Amanda searched the rest of the building carefully, but found nothing of use. She followed the tracks out of the building. They turned down the road. She began to follow when she saw something else.

A bloody print, the sole of a big boot, trailing behind Ellie's tracks.

_Someone started to follow her._

The thought filled Amanda with dread. She picked up the pace, wondering whether she'd find Ellie at the end of the trail...or Ellie's corpse. Either way, she knew she had to hurry. Night was falling and Amanda wanted to get a bit more distance before the sun set completely and plunged everything into darkness.

* * *

When night fell, so did rain. It was a light sprinkle at first, which gave Amanda enough time to find shelter in a gas station, but soon the rain began to pour out of the sky. The roof had numerous holes, so water began to pour from the leaks. She swore under her breath. The rain would wash the tracks away and she would lose the trail. _There wasn't much to go on anyway_, she realized, _but that doesn't mean I'm gonna give up. _The only truly defensible place in the station was an office. At night, and with no windows, it was truly dark and secluded. She turned on her flashlight, checked the inside for infected, and, finding none, shut the door tightly before shoving the heavy desk in front of it. It was the only way in. _Or the only way out_, she thought darkly.

But now she had more pressing concerns. She stripped herself of her jacket and examined her bandages, she saw that they were old and. needed changing. When she pulled the ones on her finger off, pain lanced up her fingers and down her arm. The dirty cloth stuck to the wounds, but she had nothing with which to loosen them, forcing her to simply rip them off. She ground her teeth when they finally came free. Where her fingernails had once been, only red, glistening, pulpy masses of flesh remained. Fresh blood began to stream from the wounds and she went to work, dousing them in alcohol and bandaging them up again. Each time she dripped the alcohol on them, she had to suppress a scream, the tender flesh burning under the cleansing fire. After she was done cleaning and bandaging her fingers, she went on to her other wound, the gunshot. It had bled a lot and was already clotting when she'd bandaged it in Jackson, but that proved to be a problem when said bandage clung to the wound like a child refusing to leave her mother. She had no choice but to rinse the bandage in alcohol before peeling the bandage away. I should get a sturdy stick to bite down on, she thought as she narrowly avoided chomping off her own tongue in agony. Cleaning and dressing went better, and after it was complete she pulled her jacket back on.

Amanda had a flashlight dinner of canned green beans. She lay down on the floor, an ancient and rotting carpet that seemed to have lasted the test of time, stinking of the last twenty years. She took off her cap and placed it in the corner of the room before resting her head on her backpack, her rifle leaning in the corner over her cap and her pistol tucked under her backpack. If anything came up, she'd be ready to go at a moment's notice.

Laying down on a floor in the middle of nowhere, her jacket substituting a blanket, Amanda, for the first time in a long time, felt truly alone. Yet it took her less than a day to fall back into the old routine. It was...alien to her, yet it was also entirely predictable. Since the beginning, she'd always been on the move, always alone, never stopping. She'd been all around the country, trying to find some place that the infection hadn't touched, a place where everything was the way it had been when she was a girl, a place that might hold something for her. She had never stopped looking, but she eventually stopped hoping. It had become harder and harder not to eat a bullet, but every time she felt the need, she looked at her baseball cap. It seemed to tell her, "You'll find it. Just keep looking."

She couldn't remember how she got the baseball cap, but she was certain she had it when she was a girl. It, along with her father's compass, was her last reminder of home. What bothered her the most wasn't what she could remember. It was what she couldn't. Her parents faces. She couldn't remember them. Her high school classmates. They were all a blur. But she did remember certain things.

Every Fourth of July, her parents had a cookout in the back yard. It didn't matter that it was a hundred and five degrees out at the best of times, her father always grilled up some burgers and invited the neighbors. He made moonshine, and when she was little she would always beg for a cup, but all she'd get was a sip. She remembered it being especially bitter, enough so that she'd spit it out, coughing as their neighbors laughed goodnaturedly. At night, she would play with sparklers, light off black cats, and cover her ears and watch as the mortars flew up into the sky and boomed, the explosions shaking in her chest. It was her favorite holiday, even better than Christmas.

It was getting harder and harder for her to remember those times. Other memories she wished would disappear, but they were as fresh and as real as if the events were still happening.

_A man, stumbling down the street, twitching, shivering. Sweat running down her brow, hand in hand with John, her high school sweetheart. A strangled scream, the man charging them, John throwing her aside, the man pouncing on him, grabbing, snapping, snarling like an animal, shrieking and moaning like he's in pain. She grabbed the man, no, thing, pulling and pulling. It gnashed its jaws, teeth missing her by inches. John shoved it off her, grabbed her, and they ran, pounding feet behind them. Police sirens, someone shouting, "Get down!" one, two, three gunshots. The man fell, twitching. Paramedics around John, looking at his arm. A bite. He smiled as they took him away to the hospital, never to return. It was the first day of the infection. _

_Years later, a cold night, alone, shivering in the woods, pistol in hand. So easy to turn it toward her head and pull the trigger. Days and days of no food, cold rain, just one, insane hope kept her going. A town, a few days away, filled with people, building a community, bringing things back to the way they were. She wouldn't last long enough to get there. A river, rushing, swollen with rain. She trudged onward, up a hill. A dam came into view. Lights, shouting, guns drawn and pointed at her. She sank to her knees, crying. She found it. She finally found it. _

Amanda shivered. That was the night she found Jackson. That was the night she felt that her search was finally over. _I was stupid to think it would last forever. Nothing good ever does._

_Smiles, gentle voices, soft kisses. Hands on her shoulders, her sides, touching her. Clothes falling, flesh against flesh, a breathy moan, "Joel," A hardwood floor, cold against her back, lips on her neck, a tickling beard against her skin, her fingers clawing at his shoulders, tugging his hair as she breathed his name. They rolled over. Hands on her hips, eyes staring up at her with love, "It's been so long," She said it and so did he. They slept in his bed, together. The next morning, bare feet on hard wood, Joel's shirt around her, eggs sizzling in the skillet. Ellie making jokes, trying to hide her discomfort, Joel nearly choking on his eggs from embarrassment. Smiles all around, a real family at last._

_I never told him I loved him_, she realized, _I never told her I loved her, either_. It was her last thought before she fell into a fitful sleep.

* * *

Amanda awoke to voices outside. She groaned quietly and sat up. There was something else, too, something she hadn't heard in a long time. An engine idling.

"Come on, Mark, we're wasting fuel running the jeep like this. What do you think _he_ would do if he found out we were fucking around with gas like this? Let's just get to the rendezvous point. It's literally just up the road."

"You get hit on the head when we were pulling out of Jackson? You know he's just gonna have us go back down there and do scavenger hunt for that little girl. There's no fucking way I'm going back. If ever see that prick again, I'll put a bullet in his head."

The soldier's men. Her heart sank into her gut. It was likely they were the ones in the jeep at Jackson. _I suppose it was too much to hope the infected pulled them _all_ out of the jeep._ She hoped they would leave soon, but considering how her luck was going, they probably wouldn't any time soon.

"Okay, that's just nuts, Mark. You know what he does to people that piss him off. And even if we don't go to the rendezvous, we'll still need every ounce of gas we can scrounge up if we want to head back to Chicago."

"Fuck Chicago. That's halfway across the country from here and we sucked every car dry on the way here, especially for his fucking tank."

"Well, where did you have in mind, Mark?"

"Seattle."

"_Seattle_? You actually BELIEVED that nut's story about Seattle?!"

"Hey, if I don't have any bullets the next time we see that son of a bitch, how about you tell the soldier you thought the Seattle story was bullshit, see how well that goes over. Maybe he won't pull ALL of your nails off before he blows your brains out."

Story? What story about Seattle? Immediately this new information intrigued her, but she chided herself._ Everyone is hoping for that miracle, that place where things can go back to the way they were. But it won't happen. It will never happen. Not anymore._

"Fuck you, Mark."

"If you want to turn the engine off, then whatever. Just means it might not turn back on when the infected find us. Besides, I won't be long. There's nothing here, but I'm gonna check that office, just to be sure."

_Oh, shit! _

Amanda realized that, in her curiosity, she left her guns and her gear on the other side of the room. She scrambled to her pack, slinging it on, her rifle following right behind it. Her cap went next, with her perching it securely on her head. Her pistol was the last thing to pack and she moved to tuck it into the waistband of her pants, but stopped. She couldn't waste precious moments fumbling for it. She slid the slide back, making sure a round was chambered. There was. The handle of the door turned and the door nudged up against the desk. In her haste to train the pistol on the door, she released the slide and it popped back with a _snap_.

She froze. Her breath caught in her throat and she held it, not daring to breathe. She tightened her grip on the pistol, wincing at the minute shifting of metal. The door did not budge. There was nothing, nothing but the engine idling outside, faint and distant, almost like a memory.

_BAM!_

The door shook with the first pounding blow, Amanda nearly jumping out of her skin. By the time the second and third landed, Amanda knew that whoever was out there had heard her and was determined to come in. The desk budged inch by inch with each blow, and finally a sliver of light cut through the darkness, the shadow of someone's boot slamming into the door.

There was a brief pause when she heard someone say, "Here, Mark, let me try," and then the door burst open, shoving the desk aside. The man who came through was young, maybe thirty at the oldest, a clean shaven face and bright eyes. He was tall and broad, but thin as well, looking at home in the blue tattered military uniform and black combat vest, an assault rifle hanging from a strap around his shoulder. She made her aim adjustments accordingly as he swept the room with his gaze and his eyes fell on her.

"Oh, fuck!" was all he had time to say before she pulled the trigger.

* * *

**robertskycard**


End file.
